Treyarch's flashy reveal of Call of Duty Black Ops 4 amounted to a confirmation of what had leaked: this game breaks with tradition by not having a single-player campaign, but it does have a battle royale mode and expanded multiplayer to compensate.

And yet, the reveal left us with more questions than answers. Earlier this year, Eurogamer heard the campaign - or at least the closest Black Ops 4 had to a campaign - had been scrapped and the game restructured to focus on multiplayer. Why did this happen?

Battle royale's inclusion in the game comes as little surprise. The phenomenally popular Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds caught the eye of the suits at Activision, and now Call of Duty has its own take. But how long has Treyarch had to build Blackout, Black Ops 4's battle royale? And how many players will it contain?

Elsewhere, the competitive multiplayer seems inspired by other popular shooters, such as Blizzard's Overwatch and Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege, with an emphasis on "specialists" that are basically heroes, each with their own unique powers that are basically ultimates. But exactly how much inspiration has Treyarch taken from other games, and did Blizzard help Treyarch out during the development of Black Ops 4, as Treyarch helped Blizzard as it developed Overwatch?

It was with these questions in mind that I sat down with Treyarch co-studio head Dan Bunting - hot on the heels of the reveal of Call of Duty Black Ops 4 - to find answers.

I understand there was a campaign you worked on that was scrapped. What challenges did you face in the development of it, and what ultimately led to the decision to ditch it?

Dan Bunting: Going back to the very beginning of Black Ops 4 development, we never had set out to make a traditional campaign. We always started from the place of, we're going to make something different with this game that was going to be inspired by how our community was interacting with Black Ops 3 and the games over the years. We see more and more players spending more time with multiplayer and zombies, not just in the game, but out of the game, streaming and talking about it in forums. It's generated a really huge crowd response. The decision was, we wanted to make a different style of game this time.

Throughout the course of development we tried a lot of ideas, a lot of things that challenged convention, that might be a different kind of twist on how we might think of a Call of Duty game in the past, or a Black Ops game in the past. As we did that, some things make it, some things don't.

The game we're representing today really represents the best of the ideas that have run through that gauntlet of game development, which is pretty typical for how we do things.

Just to be clear, you're saying there was never a traditional campaign?

Dan Bunting: There was never a traditional campaign. We've always wanted to tell stories in different ways. We've always wanted to celebrate our community, especially how you play the game with friends. The heart and soul of this game is how you play games with friends and we wanted to do more with that than we've ever done before.

You'll know as well as I do that there are some people who love the traditional campaigns in the Call of Duty games. Black Ops has always had one. There are some people who are already saying no campaign, no sale. What message do you have for them?

Dan Bunting: I think change is always going to be hard for people. I would say to our fans, Treyarch has never let you down over the years. This is a studio you know is always going to deliver the best of the experiences you know and love, especially with the Black Ops series. We are delivering so much more of what players spend most of their time doing in our games in the series.

From the multiplayer, with the way we are going much deeper into the validating new playstyles, so anybody can pick up the game and play it and feel like they can have fun, to zombies and having the biggest content delivery we've ever done in a game launch, to our brand new Blackout mode, which is inspired by the battle royale genre but done in our own unique way.

There are some modes available to players who want to play solo. If there is a player who just wants to play Black Ops 4 solo, what can they actually do in the game at launch?

Dan Bunting: In multiplayer we're delivering a series of solo missions that can take you deeper into understanding each of the specialists you're going to play in multiplayer. It's going to give you backstory. It's going to give you some worldbuilding setup of, why do these characters exist? Who do they work for? What kind of operations do they run on? Just giving players a sense of connectedness to the world they're engaging in for so long, and tell the stories of those characters we just barely touched on in Black Ops 3, and introduce some new ones in the process as well. That series of missions will also help you refine your skillset with each of those characters, so you can go into multiplayer and feel a sense of mastery.

You used the word trials in the show.

Dan Bunting: We talked about how they will serve as trials for players to strengthen their capabilities with each of their characters. The gameplay around each one is custom crafted to give you a much deeper insight into how that player operates and moves and works in multiplayer, but it also is going to give you all the story that is wrapped around that character, who they are and where they come from.

How will that story be delivered, exactly? Are we talking about cut-scenes we might see in a traditional campaign sense?

Dan Bunting: You'll just have to come back later and I'll show it to you!

The specialists this time around seem much more individual, with unique powers and abilities. Watching the show, I thought of Overwatch. Was it an inspiration for competitive multiplayer and the design of the specialists?

Dan Bunting: I talked about how in competitive multiplayer, in Black Ops especially, it's always been first and foremost about the weapons and the gameplay they deliver to players. That is number one, your primary experience when you play competitive multiplayer. It's about the gun. We've done more investment in our weapons systems than Black Ops 1, 2 and 3 combined. The core feeling of the game, the movement, the gunplay, these are all fundamentals that are going to tighten the gameplay loop and make it feel like it is deeper and more rewarding as they go along that journey to mastery.

With specialists, what they provide is a way to add a tactical layer to the game. For example, you saw Ajax with his ballistic shield. That shield, he doesn't get very often. You might get it a couple times a match, and you're going to have to use it during critical moments. When that happens, what it creates is an emergent moment with you and your teammates. It's not something you have to plan. It's something that's going to benefit you right then and there, just for yourself if you want to use it. But if you want to use it with your teammates you can. It'll just make the game experience better.

But from the outset, we never set out to make a game that was so focused on teamplay, that was going to force players into playing as a team. That's just never been our goal. Our goal has always been, we know what Call of Duty is. We know what the Black Ops experience is, and what our fans expect. They expect to be able to basically go in and wreck house if they want to and play as a solo player and have a great experience. But we are also trying to strengthen those connections they have with their teammates, even passively. The fog of war system is a big change. It opens up your mini map to be, now I'm relying on each of my teammates and where they are positionally to give me more information about the game and the situational awareness I have.

What sort of competitive multiplayer modes do you have planned? Are there more objective based modes this time around?

Dan Bunting: All the favourite modes players have known throughout the years are going to be back. We're also introducing a brand new mode called control. We designed it to be a game mode that allows all of the changes we've made to this game to be expressed in the strongest way. It's a game mode that feels very competitive. It's very intense. It's setup as a first team to three wins, so it's attack / defend, similar to how you think about a Search and Destroy match. One team starts attacking, the other team starts defending, and then it flips sides on the next round.

The attacking team has to capture two objectives that are on the map. Each of those objectives have a staged objective capture, so you can capture in three segments.Once you've captured one segment, the defending team can't deplete that capture status. Capture the second segment, they can't deplete the second segment. Capture the third and they've captured the whole objective.

Having such a focus on single objectives at a time, you get a tight strong experience of your team pushing or your team holding down. If you're defending, you're going to hold down that place heavily and you're going to have to work with people to do that effectively. If you're the attacking team, you're going to do a dedicated push together. It really brings out the best of what this multiplayer experience is.

See, that reminds me of Overwatch!

Dan Bunting: It was really inspired by our history. Hardpoint, for example, is a game mode that's popular on our competitive circuit, especially with competitive players. We talked about it like, what if Hardpoint and Search and Destroy were combined together? Those two modes are the game modes people who play competitively love the most. We felt like, if we wanted to bring out the spirit of competition, we designed a mode that would do that effectively.

Have you worked with Blizzard on this at all, in the same way they spoke with you when they were working on Overwatch?

Dan Bunting: We have worked with Blizzard primarily on the Battle.net platform and getting our PC game onto Battle.net. We have not consulted with them for this game for any kind of gameplay. Jeff Kaplan said we went down to help them, just give them feedback and consultation when they were developing just to learn, because they had never made a shooter before.

Moving on to the battle royale mode, When was the decision made to build it? How long have you had to build it? How did it get going in the first place?

Dan Bunting: It's no secret to anybody in the industry that battle royale took the world by storm when it first hit early last year. Our team is a team of intense gamers. Of course, we play the games everybody plays. We were playing a lot of different games early last year and it was clearly a phenomenon that was going to change the game industry. Our thinking started to formulate around that time.

So you've had a fair bit of time having to implement it. What challenges have you faced getting battle royale making sense with the standard Call of Duty formula, not just in terms of the gunplay, but the engine, which has so far been focused on smaller experiences?

Dan Bunting: I would say that's generally true for things like multiplayer maps, because that's the kind of style of play we have. But the reality is, we have been developing advanced engine tools for our developers to be more effective and more efficient in building large open spaces for a long time.

This game, actually, from the early days we started a heavy push to build a new technology we call superterrain. It allows our artists and level designers to essentially paint terrain into the map in a fast and fluid way, and also build it into a massive open space that can stream very easily and efficiently for the engine. That was a technology we started working on very early in this project. It has proven to be a really strong investment. It's overhauling what our team is capable of building.

One of the things I love about Call of Duty is it's steadfast in its commitment to 60 frames per second. Is that something you're committed to for the battle royale mode as well?

Dan Bunting: We are always committed to 60 frames per second with every chance we possibly can. And of course, there's always circumstances where you might dip down. But a core pillar of our team is to always deliver the performance players need, especially in multiplayer type gameplay settings.

That sounds like a yes.

Dan Bunting: Yes! It is our commitment.

You didn't mention how many players battle royale is, which was clearly a deliberate decision. I assume from that the number of players is something you're still trying to figure out internally?

Dan Bunting: Yeah. It's still a game in active development. We're always fine tuning the appropriate amount of players for any experience, and this is no different. We're still fine tuning the details. Our approach on this is, it's not really about player count, because at the end of the day it's about whatever that experience is designed to be optimised for and to have the most fun in. Our goal is not to strive to hit the highest player count. Our goal is to deliver the best, most Black Ops experience we possibly can.

So you can't say it will be 100 players at launch then?

Dan Bunting: We're not saying that today.

Can you say it'll be at least a certain number of players?

Dan Bunting: It's multiples higher than the highest we've ever done.

So more than 50?

Dan Bunting: That's all I can say.

People are already trying to work out the number based on the footage you released of the map.

Dan Bunting: We love to put our Easter eggs out there.

You have vehicles in there as well. We don't normally associate Call of Duty with vehicles in the active competitive multiplayer. How exactly will it work?

Dan Bunting: Land, sea and air. At Treyarch we have a long history with vehicles. This Call of Duty team is really built from the United Offensive team that started at Grey Matter before the two studios merged together. If you remember that game, it was the first game in the series to release after the original Call of Duty in 2004. The team we have built up from delivered their own take on multiplayer, which was very vehicular and very focused on giving players different, unique loadout opportunities. We carried that through until World at War, which was the last game we did vehicles on. But we have a long history in our technology base and in our team skill set with vehicular gameplay. Definitely throughout the campaigns we've done. So, we love vehicles. It adds a layer of fun a battle royale style game needs to have.

You said the battle royale mode will include all the weapons from all the Black Ops games. Is that correct?

Dan Bunting: I can't say all the weapons. But we're bringing back a lot of the fan favourites from each of our games in the series. That's really what it's about. David said up on stage, we're bringing to bear a decade's worth of Black Ops legacy with this, which is awesome for us as developers. You spend so much time making content and features, that you can finally bring all of these things together in one experience is really amazing for us.

In terms of the characters as well, it's a kind of greatest hits?

Dan Bunting: Yeah, it's a number of our fan favourite characters throughout the series, including zombies.

Will zombies be running around on the battle royale map as well as the players?

Dan Bunting: I wish I could go into more details today, but that's something we'll have to talk about later.

On the map, I get the impression it's various maps from across the series being stitched together in some way.

Dan Bunting: When you start to build a multiplayer experience around a massive, wide open space, it's important you have a lot of hotspots you go to where you can expect there to be really intense combat. For those hotspots around the map, as you probably saw from the teaser, we are pulling some of the great moments of our maps from the series together in a way that - I wouldn't say stitched together because that doesn't really do it justice - we're reimagining each of those spaces in a way that makes sense for the geography of the gameplay.

How To Stay Alive In PUBG

Situational Awareness

First things first, the most important factor in determining whether you live or die in a given PUBG encounter is situational awareness. Taking survey of your surroundings and making mental notes about the environment, structures, and threats you observe is the first step in improving your PUBG situational awareness. Looking around and surveying the situation begins the moment you dive out of the back of the airplane.

As you fall towards the ground, always make use of the free look camera. On PC, the Left Alt key is the default bind for this function (RB+Left Stick for Xbox One). Hold the freelook key and your your mouse (or right stick on Xbox One) to look around your character. This viewing mode works in both First Person Perspective (FPP) and Third Person Perspective (TPP) matches. The free look camera is incredibly valuable in all situations and should be abused whenever possible. When you know more than your opponent, you have an advantage. In TPP matches, the free look camera allows you to look around walls and cover. If you are not using this option, it is being used against you.

Many times, it is incredibly helpful to your chances of winning to occasionally stop moving and simply look around you. Lots of players make the decision to move from one spot to another and gain tunnel vision, only focusing on their destination. If you aren’t looking to your sides or behind you, you will not see the enemy coming. Obviously, the location that you choose to stop and look around is important. You don’t want to do it in the middle of an open field or meadow, otherwise, you stick out like a sore thumb to other players who may be watching you. Try to plan your idle glances when you are near cover or trees.

When To Engage

Once you have spotted enemy players, you don’t always have to start firing at them. When possible, take the time to think about the chances of success you will have if you do fire on that person. Is it likely that you will even hit them? If you do hit them, is it likely that you will kill them quickly? Every time to fire your weapons, the sounds (and muzzle flash) advertise information about your location (and where your attention is focused). Taking low-percentage pot shots at a distant target is unlikely to help you win a round and will often alert nearby players to your exact location. By doing this, you’ve put yourself at a serious disadvantage.

This line of thought also applies in Duos and Squad matches. Taking low-percentage shots at an enemy team can be incredibly unhelpful to your cause if your own teammate(s) are not in position to engage the targets safely. Another consideration for Duos and Squad matches is to not immediately fire on a freshly spotted target. If you see one player, chances are, his teammate(s) are not far behind. Before engaging another team, it is to your advantage to know where all members of said team are located prior to engaging. You don’t get any closer to winning if you murder a single member of a team, attempt to loot the body, and then get immediately killed by one of their nearby teammates.

Another thing to pay attention to in team modes are downed enemies. If you attack an enemy and they drop to their knees, but you are not immediately awarded a kill, that player still has teammates alive somewhere. It is always a good idea to keep a count of the enemy players that you or your team downs during an encounter. In Squad matches, you should always assume that any person you engage with is part of a full, 4-person team. Looting dead bodies should not be considered “safe” until you know that all four members are dead. While fighting a squad, if the player that you or a teammate shoots dies instantly without dropping to their knees, you can be sure that the entire team has been eliminated.

Urban Encounters

In each of PUBG’s current maps, there are sparse areas with little cover and there are towns full of structures. In the case of Miramar, some of these towns are quite large and full of buildings. Surviving encounters in the more densely-packed areas requires that you pay attention to visual clues, rather than simply looking at where you heard gunfire and aiming down your sights. There is much more that you need to process when observing your surroundings in urban areas.

Because of the abundance of cover, enemy players can be just about anywhere. Take note when you enter these towns to see if there are open doors and broken windows. Usually, structures with these have previously been occupied and/or looted by other players. When conditions force you into these areas, don’t forget to use the audible clues provided to you by the game. Any time you hear broken glass, you can assume that someone near you has jumped through a window. If you believe there are enemies near you, stop and listen for footsteps. When running, player footsteps can be audible as far as 40 meters away.

When you need to move around in these town environments, always make sure that you aren’t an easy target. Never run up and down the middle of roads. If you need to cross a road, do it quickly. Always try to move from cover to cover. Danger can come from 360 degrees around you. If a stone wall or building covers 180 of those degrees, you only need to focus on the other side to which you are exposed. In team situations where you are being fired on, attempt to have a teammate fire on the enemy’s position while you or other teammates move to new cover. This lowers the chances that the enemy engaging you can easily land killing shots. When possible, try and return the favor for the teammate that gave you cover.

What To Grab When You Drop Hot

Sometimes, you will find yourself in a rough situation as you come off the back of the airplane. You had big plans about how you were going to drop into a specific spot and loot, only to find that 16 other players had that same idea. These kinds of situations are what my friends and I call “hot drops”. Hot drops can often be a coin flip between life and death, but how you carry yourself in the first few seconds after you hit the ground can tilt the coin in your favor.

The first thing you need to do is decide to get the hell out of Dodge or stay and fight. If you choose to fight, get into a structure as soon as possible and search for a firearm. Any gun is useful, but on the occasions where you have a choice, some are more helpful than others. On most hot drops, you will come across pistols first. Always take the P92 or M1911 over the R1895 and R45, simply because the revolvers take so much longer to load. During the early encounters, the person who shoots first is often the victor. You don’t want to be caught trying load rounds when an enemy comes in your house.

With primary firearms, look for shotguns and the Micro Uzi. Most hot drop encounters occur at very close range, tipping the balance in favor of the S686, S1897, and S12K. If you do go with the Micro Uzi, be sure to set it to the auto firing mode as soon as possible. Also remember that changing firing modes, opening doors, or picking up items will interrupt a weapon reload. Get you rounds into your gun as fast as humanly possible. If you have the time to spare, throw attachments onto your early round weapons. Once they were in your inventory, you only need to right-click on an attachment and the game will automatically affix it to the gun. This works much faster than dragging the attachment onto the gun. For a detailed overview of attachments for all weapons, refer to our PUBG weapon attachment guides: Sights, Magazines, and Muzzles.

The Circle And You

The shrinking circles of PUBG are a source of excitement and frustration. As they randomly constrict themselves across the map, the circles can quickly turn your can’t-miss plan into garbage. The players in PUBG who survive longest and earn those chicken dinners make the shrinking circles work for them. Your view of the white and blue circles on the big map or minimap gives you incredibly valuable information about where to go and where other players will be in the near future.

The first thing to know about the circles how quickly they can damage you (or other players) and how quickly they will move. In the early parts of a PUBG round, being outside the blue circle does a very small amount of damage to players. It will lightly chip away at your health bar when you find yourself behind it as it contracts. Once the blue circle reaches the edge of the white circle, the new, smaller white circle will show up on the map. At this time, the chip damage that you will receive while behind the blue circle wall increases. It is imperative that you don’t find yourself hundreds of meters out of the circle when this occurs.

Always Stay Geeked Up On Red Bulls

You can mitigate the damage you take from the circle by ingesting stimulants like Energy Drink and Painkillers. While it takes longer to ingest Painkillers, they provide a bigger buff to your stimulant bar (located under your health bar). The closer to full your stimulant bar is, the faster you can regain health and the faster you move. You will need to slam 3 Energy Drinks back to back to fill the bar, or one Painkiller and one Energy Drink. You can also use Bandages and First Aid Kits while taking circle damage. If you have enough of them, it is possible to survive outside of the circle for extended periods.

Because of this, you should always pick up First Aid Kits, Energy Drink, and Painkillers when you see them. When looting a dead body, it is always a good practice to grab any stimulants or healing items to keep yourself topped off. Using stimulants during regular encounters is also a great way to keep yourself alive. If conditions are forcing you to make a move to a new location and you know that this movement will put you in serious danger of being fired on, it is always advised to top yourself off with Painkillers and Energy Drinks. The gradual healing may be the difference between you living and dying. The slight movement boost can make you harder to hit or keep you just ahead of a shrinking circle. If you find yourself in the closing moments of a tense match, always remember to get stimmed up. If two players are similarly equipped and fir on each other at the same time, the player who is stimmed up is more likely to survive the encounter, assuming both players hit each other similarly.

Embrace Your Inner Edgelord

You can use the blue circle’s positioning to move yourself around the battleground and increase your chances of survival. Many players like to play the edge of the circle, as it allows you to keep focus on the area inside, rather than having to worry in every direction. Take note of the blue circle’s positioning before the timer reaches zero. The edges of the blue circle farthest away from the white circle will shrink faster than the edges close to the white circle. You can use this to your advantage when moving with the circle.

If you have some spare time before the circle contracts, look at the map a check for spots inside the white circle where you would prefer to be by the time the blue circle closes in. If you are constantly running from the blue circle to stay alive, it decreases the chances that you will be able to remain calm during an enemy engagement. When the circle closes in on you, things can get hectic and you may find yourself doing stupid things that you would not do without the external pressure from the blue circle.

Once you find yourself comfortable with how to move within the circles, use the information about upcoming shrinks to make educated guesses about where enemy players will position themselves after the shrink. Are there structures or defilades within the white circle that would give a tactical advantage if you were near them? Some players will hide in cover near the edges of the blue wall in the later stages of a round. If you think a player or players may be in that cover, make a guess as to where that group would move to once the circle begins the next shrink. If you were in their position? What spot would you prefer to move to? You can position yourself to exploit the opportunity presented by their movement and open fire on them. Successfully working the edges of the blue circle can put you at an advantage over players who choose to focus on the center of the white circle and hide until the circle forces action.

Good Luck Out There

While these tips and suggestion are no guarantee that you will survive or wins any rounds of PUBG, making situation awareness a priority and picking up habits that put the advantage in your favor will start to work for you over time. There are 30 million people currently playing PUBG right now. No matter what, there is always some hot shot kid who is better at aiming that you and can afford to play 16 hours a day. Paying closer attention and putting yourself in good situations can help tip the scales in your favor.

I also understand that reading sucks and no one wants to constantly refer to crazy text guides like this when working to improve their PUBG game. I strongly suggest watching some of the top Twitch or Youtube streamers of PUBG. While most of their viewers and chatters will be focused on the crazy headshots and comedy moments, you should pay attention to their observational habits. Pay attention to how they move their character during engagements. Notice the fights they take and they fights they avoid. Make notes about how they spotted enemy players and what they did once gaining that information. One of the best channels I’ve found for watching clean PUBG play without a focus on screaming, talking to subs, or nonsense is Aculite. His Youtube videos on PUBG contain a world of information on how to carry yourself while playing.

Sony has released a brand new firmware update today for the PS4. This firmware patches the system software to version 5.55. The changelog can be read below. It doesn’t seem to mention much aside from improving software performance which has now replaced the stability updates.

Main features in version 5.55 update

This system software update improves system performance. There is not a lot to show here. One reason of such a minor update could be related to the homebrew scene for the PS4 which seems to be accelerating at a rapid pace. Currently it is possible to exploit firmware upto version 5.05 so maybe Sony are being cautious about it and updating the firmware to patch any securitt exploit.PS4 has received a major firmware update with the jump to system software 5.50. This update was the one that added supersampling for all PS4 Pro users letting them enjoy enhanced visuals if the game doesn’t natively support downsaming from a higher resolution.The download size for this latest update is around 460 MB. It should he live now on all Sony servers worldwide so if you haven’t managed to get a prompt to download it, it should happen soon. Let us know if you have noticed any changes after installing this new firmware update in the comments below.